Prior to Chestemere becoming its own municipality a lot of local improvements were done by the Chestermere Cabin Owners Association, formed in 1958 at the initiative of Fred Paasche. (You can see him in photos of the first Chestermere fire truck). In 1971 one of the biggest concerns for this group was pollution of the lake.
A committee was set up and they met with the MD of Rocky View September 29th 1971 to discuss the closure of the lake to swimming. The issues being storm sewers, feed lots, watering holes for farms, the provincial campground ( located where John Peake Park is today) and its outhouse, grazing land next to the lake, and the fact that many cabins still had outhouses. Tests taken that July had shown high coliform counts in the water, such that the lake was closed. Newspaper headlines read, ‘ Chestermere Cottagers Warned; don’t drink it, don’t swim in it.’ (Calgary Herald 14 Sep 1971).
The CCOA, Mountain View Health Unit, the MD of Rockyview and Alberta Environment, the Provincial Board of Health and the City of Calgary worked together over the next year to try to discover what could be the cause of this pollution. Newspaper articles and letters to the editor decried the presence of septic tanks around the lake and the possibility of leakage, others blamed contamination coming in from sewage leaks into the canal, but no definitive cause was ever found. After repeated testing over the coming months, the count was low enough to welcome back swimmers in the summer of 1972.
Want to read more about what happened that year? It can be found pages 23 to 29 of ‘Chestermere A Home for All Seasons’ available from the Chestermere Historical Foundation for $20 no GST. Check out more Chestermere history at www.chestermerehistoricalfoundation.org to order a book, or join us for one of our programs (see Community Events this edition). (Photos from pages 24 and 27 Chestermere a Home for All Seasons used with permission)
